Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Typographia script + have heart!

First, I've written up a script to the first video for typographia that you can read here.

Also, I've mentioned this guy a couple times before because he's one of the grandparents of online video, but yesterday Hank Green talked on his tumblr about YouTube putting millions of dollars into educational videos that aren't making enough money to cover the cost of their production.

This MIGHT seem a bit disheartening, but the important part is here:

There were a lot of recipients of this money, and many of them were major media companies trying their hand at online video that received some fat checks, up to $5M a piece, to launch TV-like channels. What we all found out is that, no matter how hard you push them and how much money you spend on them, YouTube doesn’t work like TV…and funding it that way is daft.Of the 114 channels that YouTube funded as part of this initiative, my educated guess is that exactly one earned back its advance…SourceFed, the four-times-daily news show from Phil DeFranco’s studio. Hardly traditional media…SourceFed is gritty, low-budget, written by its hosts, and edited by a tiny team.Most of the channels that did well had comparatively small budgets and were run by people who had made online video before. Some great content got made, some of my favorite channels wouldn’t exist without the initiative. SciShow and CrashCourse are not doing terribly, at this rate, we’ll earn out our advance in about three years...Spending more money to produce the same number of minutes of content does not increase viewership. Online video isn’t about how good it looks, it’s about how good it is.

Anyway, this made me more optimistic about this project and I thought I'd share.

2 comments:

I thought that script was great, Jenna! How were you thinking they'd move on to the next video? Would it be like, "See if Thomas is talking beans" or "Whatever, I want to go back to a different theme" choices at the end?